Steak, gravy, sweet potato, carrot and garlic mushroom

Well, the title says it all really! This is one of your basic 'meat and three veg' healthy sort of dinners, something you can toss together with minimum of effort and get the delicious food out of the way and into the family. First off, sweet potatoes, while much more expensive than the 'normal' potato varieties, are SO GOOD for you. Seriously. Nearly zippo carbohydrates, they are a 'low GI' food, which means they leave you feeling fuller, for longer, on less! Which is great.

I was having an 'orange' food day. Which is why we have sweet potato and carrot. The mushrooms match the steak and the gravy links it all together. So, what you are going to need for this is:

Steak! One piece per person you're feeding.
Sweet potato: 1 inch slice per person, cut in half.
1/2 carrot per person.
1 cup diced mushroom (fresh)
1 tsp butter
2 cloves of garlic.

Whenever I cook root vegetables (they're the ones that come from under the dirt, potatoes, carrots) and pumpkin or whichever, the really -long- cooking ones, I always peel and chop and put them on to cook -first-. That way you can cook them on low heat for a good long time, without overcooking and they would be nice and tender. This singular pot is the start of my timing for the rest of my meal.

Once the sweet potato and carrot (put them in the same pot, the carrot cut into little disks, each slice of sweet potato cut in half) are boiling, you turn the heat down, leave the lid on with just a little gap to let the steam out, and put your meat on to cook.

Let the blood rise to the surface of the steak, cooking on a mid to low heat -- if you cook too high, the surface will be burnt and the centre still raw, which is blech to me. I don't want to have to fight my meat for the vegetables on the plate. Once the blood has risen, and formed a shallow puddle, turn it over. Why puddle? Because -- and this is possibly icky to a lot of people to think about -- all the delicious flavour, the moisture in the meat that we all know and adore? It is in the blood. So the blood rises through, flavouring, you turn it over, and it caramelises on the out side of the steak.

At this point, if you were cooking other vegetables, like frozen peas, frozen corn, or beans and so on, -now- would be when you put them on to cook. As it is, we are cooking garlic mushrooms.

Put your teaspoon (or so) of butter, into the same frying pan as your meat (save on washing up if you have room) let it melt -completely- but not start caramelising, bubbling or burning. Toss the diced/sliced mushroom and diced garlic cloves in, turning them with a pair of tongs, so that the butter is absorbed by the mushrooms before they really start cooking, they're just getting warm. Make sure that you don't have mushrooms ontop of each other, and let them simmer for a few minutes.

Turn your meat a second time (it should have gotten another fine layer of blood risen through) and this makes it what the chef's and restaurants call 'medium well done'. I like my food a little more cooked than that, hence the second turning. Toss the mushrooms, they should be smelling deliciously garlicly by now. Leave them, and the meat to sizzle lightly. Now, -now- is when you put the gravy on.

Just use packet gravy mix, around six teaspoons of the powder into a glass, mix in the water, stir thoroughly, pour into pot, and heat, stirring continuously. I have cheaty gravy, in that you boil the kettle, put six teaspoons of the powder into a measuring jug, add 250-300mL boiling water, stirring while you add the water, and keep stirring until all the lumps are gone and it's thick and delicious.

Strain out your vegetables (turn the meat one last time to seal the juices so they don't dribble all over the plate) put on the plate, turn off the heat, put the steak straight onto your plate, put the mushrooms either on the meat, or on the plate itself (it looks like more, and we eat as much with our eyes as our mouths) and pour the gravy over as desired.

Tada! Deliciousness served.